ed long to be the depositaries of medical books, curiosities, and records.. In the temples of his fabled ancestor Atlas, Hippocrates inscribed the progress of his discoveries and the results of his experience. The world beheld in the middle ages something very similar to this, in one of the unquestionable uses of the monasteries, where the art of medicine, corrupt as it was, found an asylum, to the advantage of the poor especially, who had no other physicians but the monks for the diseases of either soul or body.

Leaving Esculapius in the place which is "not to be named to ears polite," and rather hoping than expecting that his fate will even yet be a useful warning to his children, we come down with a single stride, as huge as one of Poseidon's in the Iliad, to historic times and the venerable figure of Hippocrates, said and anciently believed to be of the posterity of Esculapius, the sixteenth in descent from the god of Epidaurus. Scholars have even preserved his genealogical tree. Physic was handed down from father to son in the family of the Asclepiadæ, like a manor, or an heirloom. The great Hippocrates was the second of no fewer than eight eminent doctors of the name, one of whom, however, was no more than a veterinary surgeon; but he was the last of the race and in his time the house was fallen into decay, and the old intellectual estate, like a Connaught property, doubtless heavily encumbered and perhaps very little of it left. As Homer was called the father of poetry and Herodotus the father of history, so was Hippocrates the Second (for their style was that of sovereign princes,) called the father of medicine. He has been frequently paralleled with Homer; and among other likenesses between the poet and physician, the non-existence of such a person as Hippocrates has been maintained with equal spirit, and, let us add, with equal success. It is obvious, indeed, that if Ouris, or Nobody, wrote the Iliad and Odyssey, the same author was equally competent to write the Aphorisms, or any of the sixty works contained in what is termed "the Hippocratic collection."

The well known story of the meeting of Hippocrates and Democritus, (himself a medical celebrity, and re

puted to have been the first who prosecuted the science by the aid of anatomical investigations,) is quaintly told by that eminent writer, who, under the name of Democritus Junior, gave the world in the Anatomy of Melancholy, one of the most fascinating as well as learned books in our English tongue. It appears from this tale, (which is too well known to be repeated here,) that Hippocrates was the great "mad doctor" of his day, and the humorous point is that on being sent for to visit the philosopher of Abdera, whose wits were believed to be strangely disturbed, he found the supposed lunatic in the midst of his anatomical researches, and of all subjects in the world, actually engaged in investigating the disorders of the brain. Hippocrates found in his patient one of the first intellects of Greece, and is said to have maintained a scientific correspondence with him to the end of his life. The circumstance has also been recorded, that Hippocrates upon this occasion, with a magnanimity worthy of his name, refused the splended remuneration which the Abderites pressed upon him; an example never too much to be recommended to the imitation of his descendants, and which, it is only just to acknowledge, has been frequently followed by not a few of them, especially those who come nearest to their great master in genius and reputation.

Medical societies or schools seem to have been as ancient as Hippocrates. The Hippocratic oath, as it is called, has been preserved, and is one of the greatest curiosities we have received from antiquity.

"I swear by Apollo the physician, by Esculapius, by Hygeia, by Panacea, and by all gods and goddesses, that I will fulfil religiously, according to the best of my power and judgment, the solemn vow which I now make. I will honour as my father the master who taught me the art of medicine; his children I will consider as my brothers, and teach them my profession without fee or reward. I will admit to my lectures and discourses my own sons, my master's sons, and those pupils who have taken the medical oath; but no one else. I will prescribe such medicines as may be best suited to the cases of my patients, according to the best of my judgment; and no temptation shall ever induce me to administer poison. I will religiously maintain the purity of my character

and the honour of my art. I will not perform the operation of lithotomy, but leave it to those to whose calling it belongs. Into whatever house I enter, I will enter it with the sole view of relieving the sick, and conduct myself with propriety towards the women of the family. If during my attendance I happen to hear of anything that should not be revealed, I will keep it a profound secret. If I observe this oath, may I have success in this life, and may I obtain general esteem after it; if I break it, may the contrary be my lot."

It

Hippocrates, as we learn from Galen, considered that in every medical case there were three parties, the doctor, the patient, and the disorder. was something like what is called in physical astronomy the problem of the three bodies. The most favourable combination is when the patient and the doctor unite to put down the disease. If the sick man leave the physician to combat the disease alone, or still worse, if he actually espouses the side of the disease in the quarrel, the consequence must be that the doctor, instead of the disorder, must go to the wall. But if, opposing the disorder, the patient will honestly take his physician's part against it, there will then be two men against one malady, and there will be the best chance of carrying the day. We take this from the pages of Galen, assuming that our readers in general will prefer an English paraphrase to the original Greek. The theory is gravely propounded, though it certainly has an air of pleasantry; in its development, however, we perceive the good sense at the bottom, for it introduces a discussion of the various duties prescribed by good sense, no less than by science, to both doctor and patient, in the course of which a multitude of excellent rules are laid down, and the minutest directions given for the management of the sick room (anticipating Miss Martineau), and other minor points of that kind, by no means to be neglected, though subordinate to the main business of physic. The great rule for the sick man to

observe, is to honour and obey his doc tor. This is carried so far as to affirm that "unless the patient respects and admires his physician as a god, he will never follow his prescriptions with the requisite fidelity."* The physician is on his part to do everything to support the prestige of his profession. Among other things, (and we think we have known doctors who would do well to attend to what Galen says upon this point), he ought to keep his hands and face scrupulously clean; his hair also combed, his beard trim, and his attire neat and becoming; so as to offer nothing to the eye of the invalid to annoy and make him uncomfortable. Then Galen tells us that there are 66 some of his craft so senseless as to come into a sick room making a clatter with their feet, and speaking at the top of their lungs; the patient is awakened perhaps from his sleep, and irritated against his doctor before he sees him. The physician ought to choose the times of his visits discreetly, and he ought to enter without making a noise, without raising his voice, or swaggering, or giving offence by look, word, or gesture."

To return for a moment to Hippocrates; we must distinguish between the ancient or classical Hippocrates, and the legendary Hippocrates of the middle ages, where he makes a prominent figure in prose and rhyme, as for instance in the "Seven Wise Masters," where one of the tales begins with, "Your majesty (Dioclesian) knows that Hippocrate, the wise clerke, was auncientlie professor of physicke in this citye." The history of this very remarkable man fades away at both extremities into the mists of romance and fable. The gay doctors of modern times are flattered by reading that their great original had a reputation for gallantry in addition to his professional glories; though upon one occasion his devotion to the sex led him into a difficulty, not unlike one of the unhappy scrapes in which the kight of La Mancha is

involved by his amorous passion. The story (which is sometimes related of Virgil the necromancer), ran that a fair deceiver, one of the "merry wives" of Rome, made an assignation with the celebrated Ypocras, (as he is called by mediæval writers), and it was arranged between them that he should come by night with the basket to the foot of her bower, when she would let a rope down from her window and draw him up to her apartment. And draw him up the lady did truly, but only half way, so that when day returned, Hippocrates, the first physician in the world, was exposed in the basket, swinging between heaven and earth, to the infinite scandal of philosophy and medicine, and the amusement of all Rome.*

It is passing strange, but in writing of most of the learned professions, the subject of remuneration is perpetually recurring, although there is certainly no natural association of ideas between so sordid a thing as money, and such exalted subjects as medicine, for example, or jurisprudence. One of the most famous of the Greek disciples of Hippocrates was Erasistratus, said to have made a near approach to the grand discovery of Harvey, and also to have dissected criminals alive in his inhuman zeal for anatomical research; but most famous for the enormous fee he is related to have received from Seleucus King of Syria, for saving the life of his son, afflicted with an amorous consumption occasioned by his step-mother's beauty. The fee is one of the most romantic incidents of the well-known story. The king is said to have come down with one hundred talents, equivalent to £20,000 of our money; but this is probably only another illustration of the "quicquid Græcia mendax audet in historiâ."

It is certain, however, that the scale of medical remuneration was high, even in the Hippocratic age; and it also appears that the practice of retaining physicians for the service of particular courts and communities was a very old one, for we have

it on good classical authority that the little community of Ægina kept their state-physician, who received a salary of one talent, or about £340 a-year of

our money.

At Rome many physicians made immense fortunes, particularly in the early years of the empire. The two Stertinii, brothers, mentioned by Pliny in the 29th book of this "Naturalis Historiæ," (where will be found many curious particulars of medical history,) were remarkable examples ; they not only spent large sums during their lives in embellishing the city of Naples, but between them died worth upwards of a quarter of a million of our money. Quintus Stertinius had a salary from the emperor Claudius of five-hundred sesterces per annum, more than four-thousand four-hundred pounds, and considered that he did the court a favour in accepting it, as he could have made a considerably larger income by private practice.†

The name of the first regular physician (a Greek) who practised in Rome has been handed down to us. Archagathus was so well received on his arrival that jus Quiritium, or freedom of the city in its largest acceptation, was conferred upon him, and not only that, but he was provided with a shop, or surgery, at the public expense, in the compitum Acilii, for Pliny has recorded the very name of the street he lived in. This was about the time of the second Punic war. Archagathus was as fond of phlebotomy as an Italian doctor of the present day, for the Italians use the lancet without remorse. The lancet and the knife were never out of his hands. In return for the favours he received from the Romans, he purged, bled, hacked, and cauterized them to such a degree, that at length they refused to tolerate such rough treatment any longer, and the commonwealth was purged of Archagathus himself. We read, too, that like all ignorant and injudicious practitioners he brought contempt and odium on his art. At a later period, when the whole swarm

of Greek adventurers were expelled from the great republic, the doctors of that nation were specially included in the edict of banishment; a measure erroneously ascribed by Montaigne and other modern writers to the elder Cato, in the teeth of the express authority of Pliny, that it was long subsequent to the days of the great censor. But Montaigne was so eager to have Cato's support in his avowed antipathy to physic and physicians, that he seems to have been more than usually negligent of his authorities in all he says upon the subject; even in his references to his dear Plutarch, who does not assert that Cato himself dispensed with medicine, though he hated the doctors; but, on the contrary, that he was his own doctor, physicked his family himself, and made such a mess of it, that he shortened the lives of both his wife and his son.

Montaigne (to ramble for a moment with that most entertaining of ramblers) is exceedingly pleasant on the topic of medicine. He tells us how his dislike to the faculty was hereditary in his house; how he came of a line of ancestors who had an instinctive aversion to physic; his father lived to seventy-four, his grandfather to sixty-nine, his great grandfather to eighty, without ever tasting a drug. He had a fine old uncle, too, who had a fever, and the people about him said, "if you do not call in a doctor, you will be a dead man." "Then I am a dead man," said the veteran ; but the Sieur de Gaviac did not die after all, but lived many a year to laugh at the physicians, and his friends who wanted him to take physic. Then he tells a multitude of piquant anecdotes, all at the expense of the faculty; how a hoary Spartan was asked what had made him live so long, and answered, "ignorance of physic;" how the Emperor Adrian exclaimed on his death bed, “turbâ se medicorum periisse," for which anecdote of Adrian there is, however, no good authority,-how somebody else shrewdly observed of the great advantage the doctors had, "inasmuch as the sun illuminated their successes,

while the earth covered their defeats," -and how the Egyptians had a law that for the first three days the patient was to be dosed at his own peril and expense, but afterwards at the expense and peril of the physician. Thus he gossips for pages, and finally informs us with a slight inconsistency, highly characteristic and making him all the more entertaining, that after all he honours the medical calling, for he knew (as we all do) many honest and amiable men who followed it, and "when he is sick he calls them

in if they pass his door, only to have a little chat, and fee them as others do." And certainly this was an excellent use to make of an agreeable doctor, for in what profession is pleasanter company to be found, with how many of them is it not most delightful to converse, from how many is it not the greatest pleasure to receive a friendly call, when the season is healthy and business slack; but the prescriptions of the wittiest and friendliest physician in the world are gall and bitterness:" we cannot have too little to do with the best of them in the way of their profession; so far we are quite of the opinion of Cato and Montaigue.

Who the medical attendant of Julius Cæsar was, in his voyage to Rhodes, when he was captured by the pirates of the island of Pharmacusa,* we are not informed; his suite at the time consisted, says Suetonius, of one doctor and two gentlemen of the bedchamber. No doubt Cæsar's travelling doctor was a pleasant fellow : most probably a lively Greek, or "Græculus." Physicians at this time were rising in social importance. We begin to find them enjoying the friendship of great men and the favours of great ladies; one notorious instance is that of Endemus, in the reign of Tiberius, who was physician and "cavalier servente" to Livia, and conspired with her and Sejanus to poison her husband, Drusus, the emperor's

son.

Another, too, gay physician of antiquity was Vectius Valens, one of the most conspicuous revellers in that wonderful autumnal orgy described

by Tacitus, when a pantomimic vin tage was presented in Messalina's garden. Valens, among other frolics, sprang into a tall tree, and being asked what he saw, answered that he saw a furious storm coming from Ostia;" a storm was, indeed, brewing in that quarter which, when it came, as it soon did, proved fatal to Valens, among the other favorites of the profligate empress.

Under the empire, too, we find another proof of the rising importance of the profession, in the attention beginning to be paid to them by the satirists ana epigrammatists. The comic writers seem to have spared the doctors. Plautus and Terence left the field unoccupied for Moliere. The ridicule of professions does not seem, indeed, to have been considered either as a legitimate exercise or a fertile source of humour by the classic dramatists, at least not by the Latins. This is, however, a point which would require more discussion and criticism than we have room for here-"Revenons à nos moutons."

Here is an epigram of Martial, occasioned by a person of the name of Andragoras, being found dead one morning in his bed :

"Lotus nobiscum est, hilaris cœnavit; et idem Inventus mane est mortuus Andragoras. Tam subitæ motis causam, Faustine, requiras, In somnis medicum viderat Hermogenes."

"Last night Andragoras was well and hearty, The merriest guest of all our dinner party. And dead this morning!-what was his attack?

He dreamed he saw Hermocratus the quack."

Here is another not so easy to give an idea of in English: :

"Hoplomachus nunc es, fueras opthalmicus ante;

Fecisti medicus quod facis hoplomachus.”.

Your lancet, doctor, so you've drop't it,
And in its place the sword adopted;
But sure your art is just the same,
Still killing by another name."

A third upon a practitioner who was larcenous, and being caught in the act of stealing a goblet, showed that his wit was as nimble as his fingers :

Clinicus Herodes trullam subduxerat ægro, Deprensus dixit, stulte, quid ergo bibis?" VOL. XLVII.-NO. CCLXXX.

The "Clinicus," as the name im ports, was a physician who was called to the patient's bedside; and it appears that only the most respectable and eminent doctors were thus confidentially employed. The dinici were the aristocracy of the profession. Herodes was a black sheep among them, and probably got little more practice after his robbery, or after the epigram.

The

With Themison every schoolboy is acquainted, immortalized as he is by Juvenal for the mortality he caused among his patients in the autumn, which was in Rome the physician's as well, as the farmer's harvest. old Scholiast says he was the "Archiater illius temporis," the first physician of his day, as we would express it; or perhaps, and more probably, physician to the imperial court, for both meanings are assigned to the word archiater.

There was another Doctor Themison, very distinguished also, and considered to have been the inventor of bleeding with leeches; whether thereby entitled or not to a place among the benefactors of mankind, we laymen do not presume to offer an opinion.

We wish we could tell our readers the name of the medical man alluded to by Horace, who was called in to cure a patient of lethargy, and was knocked down by him. " Lethargicus fit pugil, et medicum urget." "The same feat, however, has been performed in our own day, and in a manner to attract the attention of all Europe, by "a sick man" at Constantinople, supposed to labour under the very same distemper, upon a late notorious Muscovite doctor.

The hydropathic doctor of antiquity, (for there is nothing new boneath the sun,) was Charmis. He was not a Greek, however, but a Frenchman, a native of Marseilles, and "invaded Rome," so Pliny describes his arrival in the days of Nero. He too received thumping fees, one to the almost incredible tune of £1,500 sterling; he was probably indebted for his extraordinary success to the con-fidence with which we are told he denounced the practice of all his cotemporaries, and the intrepidity with which he pursued his own system. Charmis evidently belonged to the school of physic of which Circe was the mythic patroness. He was not the only professor of the water-cure

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